blog




  • Essay / The diversity and abundance of understory avifauna in...

    One of the four main islands of the greater Indo-Malay Archipelago is Borneo located along Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi. According to Das (2006), Borneo is located between the coordinates 040 S to 070 N and 109 to 1190 E. Borneo covered approximately 743,380 km2, the third largest tropical island area in the world (Darison and Fook, 2001). The largest and best-known groups of vertebrates are birds, with some 9,672 known species worldwide (MacKinnon, 1991). MacKinnon and Phillipps (1993) state that Borneo has 66% of the region's resident landbirds, or 358 species. Due to adaptation to different lifestyles, there are many families of birds that exhibit colorful and bizarre diversity. Tuen and Darub (1999) found that birds depend on resources to maintain peatland forest productivity and that many understory birds serve important ecological functions as prey-predators, seed dispersers, and pollinators. (Peh, et. al., 2005). In Borneo, the main forest formation is peat forest and is an important reservoir for maintaining biodiversity (Fatimah and Hill, 2006). MacKinnon and Phillipps (1993) highlighted that peatlands are a valuable and threatened habitat that supports a specialized subset of lowland forest avian fauna. Based on previous research by Tuen and Darub (1999), they concluded that air quality and habitat structures influenced the abundance and diversity of understory birds. The problem of this research is how habitat fragmentation influences the distribution and abundance of bird species in UNIMAS. campus. Research by Catherine and John (2001) suggests that large blocks of forest should be conserved through bird management in a fragmented forest. ...... middle of article ......ental Conservation, UNIMAS, pp 129-136.Ridzuan, M. (2006). Kajian terhadap Burung-burung of Kampus UNIMAS, Kota Samarahan, Sarawak. Faculty of Resource Sciences and Technologies, UNIMAS. p. 2-15. Not published. Smythies, B.E. (1999). The birds of Borneo. Natural History Publications (Borneo). Kota Kinabalu, pp 1-21. Sodhi, N.S. (2002). The effect of food supply on forest birds of Southeast Asia. Ornithological Science 1: 89-93. Tuen, AA and Darub, AW (1999). The diversity and abundance of understory birds in a Sarawak peatland forest. Malayan Nature Journal 53(4): 287-294. Waltert, M., Mardiastuti, A. and Michael, M. (2005). Effect of deforestation and forest modification on understory birds in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Birds Conservation International 15: 257-273. Zar, JH (1996). Biostatic Analysis, Third Edition. Prentice Hall, New Jersey.